Staff Engineer

Who you are

• Significant domain-relevant engineering experience building highly reliable distributed systems. Most Staff Engineers at Fastly have at least 7 years of related experience
• A solid understanding of the Go programming language
• A pragmatic approach to legacy systems, including experience in or a willingness to learn Perl to support, troubleshoot, and enhance our core infrastructure
• The ability to drive and deliver complex projects that span multiple teams and require cross-organizational influence
• A communicative and empathetic teammate who works effectively in a remote environment and is comfortable with asynchronous workflows
• An adaptable problem-solver who learns from mistakes, navigates ambiguity with ease, and balances short-term delivery with long-term quality through thoughtful tradeoffs
• A background writing production-level code using the Perl programming language
• Familiarity with containerization systems and platforms such as Kubernetes and Docker
• Exposure to monitoring solutions such as Prometheus and Grafana

What the job involves

• The Control Systems team translates customer intent into the configuration data that powers Fastly's edge
• Because our services are central to how every product and feature reaches the edge, this role offers a unique opportunity to partner with internal teams across the organization to shape, scale, and secure the core Fastly experience that our customers rely on every day
• As a Staff Software Engineer, you will join a talented group of engineers who solve complex problems in high-availability systems within a supportive environment where teammates genuinely enjoy working together
• If you are a motivated engineer who thrives on solving interesting problems at scale while fostering a culture of high trust, mutual respect, and shared ownership, you’ll find a rewarding home here
• Support, deploy, and share responsibility for large scale Perl production systems that store and ship configuration changes to thousands of nodes globally
• Drive architectural and operational improvements by evolving complex legacy systems into maintainable, performant Go microservices
• Provide technical leadership of engineering projects, coordinate with project stakeholders, and motivate progress
• Collaborate across engineering teams to ensure our configuration systems meet the requirements for new features and capabilities
• Mentor and support other engineers, cultivating an environment of knowledge sharing, innovation, and teamwork within the engineering organization
• Participate in an on-call rotation

The application process

• Anticipated Posting Close Date*: Aug. 29, 2026

Benefits

• Parental support and beyond: We support our families by offering generous time off for parental leave. And beyond that, we work hard to build a culture that allows for all employees to have the life outside work that they desire year round.
• Health and wellness: Your well-being matters here. Our health plans offer a variety of options, including full medical, dental, and vision coverage, short- and long-term disability insurance, mental health resources, and more.
• Invest in your future: We offer 401(k)/retirement plans, employee stock purchasing plans (ESPP), and reimbursements for learning and development programs — so we can support your ongoing growth and success.
• Keep learning and growing: Helping people go further means nurturing their talent. Through annual reimbursements for employee learning activities, regular hangouts and advice from our Senior Staff, talks from industry leaders, and cultural events — we offer tons of opportunities for people to learn. And we’re always looking to grow as a company, too: we collect employee engagement and experience data annually and leverage our Employee Experience Champion Network to understand employee feedback, so we can keep improving.